“Then when you were appointed as a lady-in-waiting, I would see you come and go with the court, and I thought that of all of them, you were the merriest and sweetest lady,” he says. “When your sister went creeping out through my gate, with her hood over her fair hair and I knew she was seeing a lover, I nearly thought to warn you; but you were so young and so pretty I could not be the one to bring worry into your life. I didn’t dare to speak to you at all until you started to say good morning to me. I used to look forward to that—‘Good morning, Captain Keyes,’ you said. And I would stammer like a fool and I couldn’t say a word in reply.”
“That’s how I knew that you liked me,” I tell him. “You spoke clearly enough to everyone else, but with me you were as tongue-tied as a boy. And you blushed! Lord! What a big man to blush like a schoolboy!”
“Who was I to speak to such a lady?” he asks.
“The best man at court,” I tell him. “I was so glad when you offered to walk with me, when I went to visit Katherine in the Tower. When you said you would escort me, and that the streets were not safe. I was so glad to have you at my side. It was like walking beside a great calm shire horse: you are so big that everyone just gets out of the way. And when I saw her, and she was in such distress that I would break down and cry with her, and then I would come out and you would be waiting for me, and I felt comforted just by your being there, like a mountain. I felt that I had an ally. An ally as big as a castle. A strong friend.”
“Certainly a tall one,” he says. “I would do anything for you, my little lady.”
“Love me always, as you do now,” I whisper.
“I swear that I will.”
He is quiet for a moment. “You don’t mind my being married before?” he asks quietly. “You don’t object to my children? They live with their aunt at Sandgate, but I would be glad to give them a loving stepmother.”
“Would they not look down on me?” I ask awkwardly.
He shakes his head. “They would know you for a great lady even when they bent low to kiss your hand.”
“I should like us to have children,” I say shyly. “First I will care for yours, and then perhaps some of our own.”
He takes my hand and holds it to his warm cheek. “Eh, Mary, we are going to be happy.”
We are silent together for a moment, then I say, “You know, I have to go now.”
He rises up from the stool to his full height and his head brushes the ceiling. He is nearly seven feet tall, from enormous boots to curly brown hair. When I stand beside him, my head is level with his polished leather belt. He opens the door for me and I go to the great barred gate of Windsor Castle and he opens the wicket gate inside it.
“Till tonight,” he whispers, and closes it gently behind me.
WINDSOR CASTLE,
CHRISTMAS 1563
My love gives me a gold ring set with a tiny ruby the color of true love, a deep red. I give him a thick leather belt to go around his broad waist. I work it myself with a shoemaker’s awl and I carve my name and my family crest into the thick leather. He can wear it turned to the inside, so that nobody knows but the two of us. When I give it to him and he takes it from the little silk bag that I have made, he blushes to his ears, like a boy.
I am so pleased with the ring he has given me. It fits my finger like a wedding band and he says I must wear it on my wedding finger when I am alone, for it is a pledge of his love to me and we are promised to each other.
“I wish we could marry and live together at once,” I whisper to him. I am sitting on his lap, his great arms around me. He holds me as tenderly as if I were a child, and yet I feel the pulse of his desire for me as a woman when I put my fingers on his strong wrist.
“I wish it, too,” he says. “The moment that you say the word I will fetch a priest and witnesses and we will marry. Or we can go to a church. I don’t ever want you to face the questioning that your sister has suffered. We will have witnesses and we will have our betrothal in writing.”
“They don’t care about me,” I say resentfully. “I am so small in Elizabeth’s eyes that she does not even fear me. It’s not as if I am like my sister, with half the courts of Europe making advances and weaving plots. My marriage is a private matter: it should make no difference to her whether I am married or single, whether I have a houseful of children or only you to love.”
“Then shall we marry in secret?” he asks hopefully. “Do you dare?”
“Maybe next year,” I say cautiously. “I don’t want to remind the queen of her anger against Katherine. I am hoping that the council will persuade her to set my sister free this month. Some scholars are making inquiries that will prove her to be the heir, and prove her wedding was valid and so her sons are legitimate heirs. I can’t think about anything else until that is written and published.”
Thomas nods. He has a great respect for the learning of my family, the more so since Jane is now recognized as a theologian and her published writings are read everywhere. “Are you writing any of the book?” he asks.
“Oh, no,” I say. “It is all being done by a senior clerk in the chancery, John Hales. He has seen the original king’s will and says that it clearly names my mother and her line as heirs after Prince Edward and the princesses. Hales has proved that our grandmother’s marriage was a good one, so our line is legitimate and English-born and Protestant. Now Katherine’s husband, Ned Seymour, is paying for the opinions of clergy overseas to show that he and Katherine’s marriage was valid too, with private vows, and their sons legitimate. When all the evidence is brought together, then John Hales will publish it and the country will see that Katherine is proven heir to the queen: legitimately born, and legitimately married.”
Thomas hesitates. He is a man with little education but he has much knowledge of the world, and he has been in charge of the safety of the palace and the queen since Elizabeth came to the throne. “Now, pretty one, I am neither a lord nor a clerk but I’m not sure that this is so wise. The queen is not a woman that ever feels obliged to follow what everyone else thinks. Even if the whole country thinks one thing, she’ll still go her own way. Remember the time that she was the only Protestant princess to stand for her faith, when her sister was Queen of England? She didn’t change her mind then, even though the whole country seemed to be against her, from the queen and all the Spanish downwards. It’ll take more than a book to persuade her, I reckon.”
“She did conform,” I say stubbornly. “I can remember her myself, going into Mass and moaning about it.”
“Coming out of Mass early,” he reminds me. “Complaining of sickness. And showing everyone that she would not stomach it.”
“Yes, but William Cecil is sponsoring this book,” I insist. “And Robert Dudley. What William Cecil thinks today, the queen announces tomorrow. In the end, she’ll take his advice. And he and his brother-in-law and all his advisors have commissioned this book, and will see it published. The queen will have to name Katherine as her heir when the whole of Christendom says she was truly married and all the Privy Council say she is heir.”
We hear the clock strike the hour. “I have to go,” I say, barely stirring from his warm embrace.
He lifts me down from his lap and, leaning forward, straightens my gown and pulls the creases from my sleeves. He is as gentle as a lady’s maid. He touches my hood and tweaks my ruff. “There,” he says. “The prettiest lady in the court.”
I wait for him to open the door to the guardroom and glance out. “All clear,” he says, and he steps back to let me out.
As I cross the courtyard from the main gate to the garden stairs, my cape wrapped around me against a sprinkling of snow, I have the ill luck to meet the queen herself, coming in from playing bowls on the frozen green. She has her red velvet hood trimmed with ermine pulled up over her ears. Her hand is on Robert Dudley’s arm, her cheeks rosy with the cold and her eyes sparkling. I step back and curtsey, sliding my ruby ring from my finger into the pocket of my cape before her quick dark gaze spots it. “Your Majesty.”